


Murdered Husbands

by shouldhavehoppedfaster



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-03 10:44:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16324751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shouldhavehoppedfaster/pseuds/shouldhavehoppedfaster
Summary: Just a thing I'm writing, running concurrently with Season 1 of Hannibal (for right now) and not upsetting canon just yet, though there may well be deviations from it as we go.





	1. Prologue

"The meeting is tomorrow."

"Are you anxious?"

"Why would you presume me to be anxious?"

Twin silhouettes of precise coiffure are basted in the slow shift of a window-curtain as the wind from outside exerts itself, flags and retreats in slothful succession. His eyes are glass-like reflections of the world outside; hers are sores on the hide of a beast recovering from near ruin in the hunt.

"You made an appointment with me, for one. It's been a while, Hannibal. I had thought, perhaps, that we were finished."

He must have heard the flutter in the valve of that last word's heart. She saw him hear it, how it sharpened his gaze into that edge of intense and unsettling cordiality, impossible to miss even in the silence. No, the knife of his eyes indicated. He was never finished with her.

"Besides which," she was left to carry on, "I thought that the attention of the FBI would, perhaps, leave you unsettled."

In his mind's eye, he stands once more before his office desk, feeling the icy length of the scalpel against his ready fingertips, waiting for either the detective or his questions to cross to within a slice's reach-- until the man did, and yet his questions did not, and his fingers once again tidied the scalpel into its proper place and abandoned it for the social graces in the plying of which he was as skilled as he was with the blade.

"Unsettled? No." One lie among countless others. "I am curious about the man whose counsel I am to keep. I wonder what manner of good I might do him."

"Do you wonder whether that manner of good may be akin to the manner of good you once did me?"

Silence drapes itself over the conversation as Hannibal leans back in his chosen seat, the impeccable arms of his suit sliding back against buttery leather until his elbows reach the crook between arm and armchair, his back affecting an elegantly casual arc, one leg rising in time with the motion to cross over the other and leave him utterly in repose, an infuriating repose marked by the devil's own smile, resting back and letting the conversation come to him, when he had been the one to announce his arrival only the evening prior.

"I may have done you the best good of all, Bedelia," he finally graces the silence with the supple purr of his voice. "At any rate, I do my best," he manages, somehow, at his age and with the spectre of all that lies between them branching like tree-like antlers in the middle of the conversation, to seem boyish and quite cheeky in this last assertion.

"I do my best for each and every one of my patients. Seeing them to their meet lot. Some find it more easily than others. A touch of the rudder will but do to have the ship of her life set on due course. But those are not the cases which consume our waking thoughts and arrest our skills. Are they?"

"They-- are not. You, however, certainly are."

"As, Bedelia, are you."

"And you hope that your new patient will be of certain interest? Or do you anticipate a light touch to be in order?"

"I am not sure what to anticipate, except for the general truism that when I meet the man, I will know. Until then-- a glass of wine? Not every case which I have found easily managed have I found dull. An old patient of mine has returned to my sphere of notice, neither intransigent nor troublesome."

"Troublesome to you," Bedelia takes care to specify in the moment that Hannibal, having risen from his seat in the middle of his change of subject, reaches the decanted wine and the glasses, and takes a moment to pour. The specification makes him to look back over his shoulder with an impishness gleaming in his left eye.

"Troublesome to me," he assents to her specification, then moves to the side of Bedelia's chair and hands her the glass from his right hand while retaining the other.

"She's like a small bird you find wounded by the side of the road," he continues, looking straight down at her from her side. She lifts the wine glass between them, heat flushing at her throat as he alludes to her birds. "You think-- this one will not survive. But in your hands, she does not flounder. She quickens, and thrives, and takes to her own, given new life alone by the simple heat of your palm."

Bedelia takes a swallow of the wine. She says nothing.

"Sometimes that's all it takes."


	2. Thoughts on Becoming Santa Claus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have some OCs! They might be important later.

Doctor Tate Dunham was starting to feel somewhat past his prime. Still blessed with enough of hair in a pale, buttery blonde made paler with a heavy admixture of grey both at the temples and throughout, he was also blessed with an abundance of stomach, a stout thickness about his thighs and upper arms, and a certain jowliness which he could no longer deny or put much energy into trying to disguise beyond the application of warm woolen scarves when in season. In short, he had, in the December of the previous year, been asked to play the role of Santa Claus at a hospital function.

He thought at the time that he should probably be more bothered by it. Instead, he seemed to realize that he was too old to care. In the pediatrics unit in which he had worked for the last seventeen years, a certain grey-haired girth only lent credibility to his wisdom. Children loved him. Parents trusted him. Without having to do much but forget to watch his diet he found himself aged into the role of chief of the unit, which was more of a hassle than an honor, but the benefits to his paycheck were more than compensation.

In the meanwhile he had wedged himself into a position of indispensability. His practicing hours were long cut, his administrative touch gentle but knowledgeable. He kept the pediatrics unit running well and was loved by the staff.

"Doctor T!" Case in point. Evan. The orderly plopped his elbows down on the counter-top next to where Tate was standing and poring through requisite paperwork routine enough for his mind to dally briefly on the last holiday season and offered up a big, crooked smile. "Are you going to the thing on Friday?"

Tate didn't really get Evan, much. Adorable, with puppy-dog eyes and perfectly tousled hair and a casual disinterest in any of the half-dozen young ladies about the place who would throw themselves at him, he attached himself firmly in friendship to the older pediatrician with an assiduousness of which Tate couldn't help but wonder the nature. Had he thought about it? Sure. In the shower, thoughts wander where they will. Outside of it? Not so much. A mistake of intent would incur not only then shame of being put straight, but, in the workplace, rather more tangible consequences-- not to mention the fact that Tate has fairly well considered himself settled down with his long-term partner. Now seems like a strange time for him to be turning to a new chapter in his love life. But the thought had certainly occurred to him-- almost involuntarily, from some half-dormant corner of his libido.

"The thing on Friday-- the reception? Yeah, I kind of have to. Why, are you?" Work functions. Fun. In this case, a reception for a new hire from Milwaukee, an up-and-coming cardio-thoracic surgeon over whose skills there had been quite a bidding war among several hospitals and the acquisition of whom was being treated as a feather in Arlington Hospital's cap. An overpriced feather, if you asked Tate, but the decision wasn't up to him.

"Free food? Uh, //yeah//," Evan answered rather cheekily. "I'll see you there, then. Are you bringing your husband?" his voice dipped into a low sing-song, and Tate tipped his head with an indulgent grin, choosing not to correct Evan on his marital status. He might have, ordinarily, but 'actually, we're not married,' sounded, in his head, a little too much like an invitation. "Maybe," he settled on. But, honestly, probably not. "Depends on his work schedule." A truth, even if a partial.

"I get it." Did he, really, Tate could only wonder. Evan rapped his knuckles on the counter-top, "Catch you later, Doctor T," he added, by way of farewell on his way off.

"Uh-huh," was Tate's cunning rejoinder. He shook his head and picked up a stack of three clipboards, taking them along with him as he left.


	3. Midnight Thirty Cookies -- or -- A Convention of Assholes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what's happening anymore, but here we go.

It was easy for Tate to keep up with the flight delays on his phone, and from their apartment in Sterling it wasn't much more than a skip and a hop over to Dulles and into the cell phone lot. He'd baked a few little bags of cookies, and as he waited for the plane to show up as landed the ziplock somehow got unzipped and he sat back and munched it down, looking sideways out the window at the line of other faces in their darkened vehicles, lit blue from below. He turned his phone screen off and set it down on his leg just in time for it to buzz.

_Just landed. Will get a lyft, get some sleep._

A smile twitched at the corner of Tate's lips, and he re-joined the ranks of the glowing faces, a crescent moon of chocolate chip cookie hanging cigar-like from one side of his mouth as he typed in a reply.

_Already in the cell lot. See you soon._

And, angling the cell phone into the cup holder near the gear shift, he turned on the car and slid into reverse, then along into the long-cycling driveway in front of the airport. A glance down once he's in the thick of the arrivals congestion has him pulling along to the correct door and finding a spot to glide in at the curb. He's fumbling with his phone again when there's a sudden knock on the passenger window and he jerks his head up, alert, to see a woman's face in the window, grinning in at him, her dark eyes lively, a the recently-knocking fingers splayed into a wave. He returns the grin and glances away to find the button to roll down the window, and then the one to pop the trunk.

"Beverly! How was Minnesota?" he asks.

"Cold!" she answers, "And now we're back in Virginia and it's cold here, too. What the hell, Tate?" she jokes after making it his fault, and he laughs under her abundance of friendly energy.

"Sorry for the weather. Peace offering?" he lifts one of the bags of cookies, and Bev leans in with a big eager set of grabby fingers. "Brian, Tate baked for us!"

"What? Baked, or-- oh! Cookies! Hey, hook me up!" The window space is getting crowded, now, with Brian also trying to angle in his head and one arm in search of cookies. It reminds Tate of something out of a zombie movie, and the image makes him chuff a little air from his nose in a further sound of jocularity as he hands out a second bag of the cookies. The car jostles as the trunk gets loaded up.

"Either of you need a ride?" Tate asks.

"I've got a lyft coming," Beverly answers. Brian is already eating a cookie, but looks tempted by the offer until Jimmy makes his way around to the side of the car. "Oh, hey, look, an asshole convention," he leans one hand against the chassis and uses the other to demonstrate the two posteriors pushed outward away from his car to a woman passing by to her waiting uber. His two co-workers extract themselves and their treats from the vehicle and head back to the curb.

"See you around, Tate! See you tomorrow, Jimmy," Beverly waves as she rock-steps backward and elbows Brian along with her, letting Jimmy open up the door and get in, leaning across to give Tate a short kiss while managing the seatbelt. "Thanks for coming out. You didn't have to," this last bit half-stifled behind a yawn he shoves his knuckles against his lips to hide.

"Aw, sure, I didn't have to. Just wanted to. Made cookies, too," Tate adds with a smile, shifting into drive and putting on the indicator for a flash or two before pulling out into traffic. "You can sleep if you want, on the way home. I know you have an early day tomorrow." Not that the drive's that far.

"I'll be alright 'til we get home." Though Jimmy's body language read a world to the contrary, the way he was sinking into the passenger seat with his coat slouched up around his shoulders, threatening to pillow his head.

"Alright. Hey, do you know what your schedule looks like for Friday? There's a thing at work that night. Thought you might come by?"

"Oh, yeah, sure, I'll... do that in the morning."

"In the morning? Jimmy? ... Jimmy?"

He was out like a light. Tate smiled to himself and turned on NPR to a low murmur for the ride home.


End file.
